Yen Press Adds Frieren Prelude and Kinki Region Audiobooks

Yen Press has a few notable releases on the way. The publisher announced on Friday that two light novels, Mei Hachimoku’s Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End ~Prelude~ and Sesuji’s About a Place in the Kinki Region, will arrive as English audiobooks in spring 2026.

The prose editions land a little earlier. About a Place in the Kinki Region reaches English readers in December 2025, while Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End ~Prelude~ follows in March 2026. Yen Press also confirmed an omnibus edition of Rem’s graphic novel take on Gail Carriger’s novel Soulless for March 2026.

Hachimoku first published the Frieren prelude in Japan in April 2024. Overseen by original manga writer Kanehito Yamada, it gathers five new short stories featuring Frieren, Fern, Stark, Lawine, Kanne and Aura. The parent series, by Yamada and Tsukasa Abe, began in Shogakukan’s Weekly Shonen Sunday in April 2020, and its anime returns for a second season in January 2026 after a feature length special in September 2023.

About a Place in the Kinki Region started as a paranormal mystery that Sesuji serialized on Kakuyomu in January 2023, telling the story of a missing magazine editor and a disturbing truth uncovered in old research. Kadokawa collected it in print that August, a manga adaptation by Tsukasa Usui began in late 2023, and a live action film opened in Japan on August 8.

Soulless, meanwhile, follows Alexia Tarabotti, a soulless young woman in Victorian London who is pulled into supernatural intrigue after a deadly run in with a vampire. Its illustrator, Rem, is a North American artist known for Tokyopop’s Vampire Kisses series who won a Kodansha manga contest back in 2007.

My take: Audiobooks feel like a lovely fit for these quieter, atmospheric stories, especially the Kinki Region mystery. It is also nice to see Frieren’s gentle world keep growing in formats that suit a slow evening.